A regular meeting of the commission for the selection of the ARMA management has been held today. It approved the list of test questions and the procedure for checking the compliance of submitted documents with the requirements of the law.

At the same time, the commission did not consider the issue of low interest in participating in the competition, nor the extension of the deadline for accepting documents from potential candidates.

According to the commission, only 12 candidates applied for the position of the National Agency management. Moreover, it is likely that not all of these applicants will be allowed to participate in the testing stage if their documents do not meet the stated requirements. Then there will be even less than 12 of them left. By the way, not all members of the commission have yet been able to get acquainted with the packages of documents.

For comparison, 32 people submitted documents for the position of the NACP head, and there were 169 applications in the SAPO competition.

As you can see, there are not enough candidates for a decent level of competition, but this number is quite understandable. The fact is that until recently, the rules and procedure for holding the competition were not published on the website of the Cabinet of Ministers, that is, candidates did not know the “rules of the game” when submitting documents. TI Ukraine has repeatedly spoken about the need for such publication before the announcement of the start of accepting documents, but for several weeks the commission has ignored this urge.

​Unfortunately, it is the lack of clear criteria for holding the competition that creates conditions for further “agreements” and the promotion of the convenient candidate. The fact that the criterion of integrity in the procedure is replaced by moral and business qualities only deepens such doubts. After all, moral qualities are not such a clear and deep evaluation criterion as integrity.

Formal compliance with the minimum rules negates the very essence of competitions, and creates doubts that virtuous and worthy candidates have a real chance of winning. That is why we have such a small number of applications for participation in the competition.

We call on the commission to continue accepting documents and finalize the procedure for holding the competition so that more worthy candidates can submit their documents.

We are confident that after potential candidates get acquainted with the clear and equal rules under which the selection process will take place, the number of applicants will increase significantly, and the commission will really be able to make a choice between worthy candidates.